Instead, it uses the default colors defined in the file $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/syncolor.vim. When you reset the syntax highlighting, it doesn’t just set everything to black and white. It’s much more powerful than the little snippet of Vimscript above. This script can reveal a list of all of the matching syntax groups. UPDATE: thanks to Gerardo Galindez for bringing HiLinkTrace to my attention.

With that information, it’s straightforward to open up a colorscheme file and edit or create a style for the word in question. Now, I can position my cursor on any word, and pressing ctrl-shift-p will reveal the syntax groups to which the element belongs. I’ve set this up to use the same ctrl-shift-p shortcut as TextMate. Nmap : call SynStack () function ! SynStack () if !exists ( '*synstack' ) return endifĮcho map (synstack (line ( '.' ), col ( '.' )), 'synIDattr(v:val, 'name')' ) vimrc file: ' Show syntax highlighting groups for word under cursor Vim doesn’t have a syntax inspector built in, but it can be added with a small amount of Vimscript. You can then tweak the style of the selected element in the “Themes” panel of TextMate’s preferences. This brings up a tooltip showing information about which scopes the current word belongs to. In TextMate, you can reveal the scope of any element by pressing the ctrl-shift-p keys. If you want to change the color of an element, the first thing you need to know is to which syntax highlighting group it belongs.

Vim set color scheme vimrc